Qualtrough shuffled to Public Services and Procurement Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shuffled rookie minister Carla Qualtrough to Public Services and Procurement Canada Monday with “marching orders” to fix the troubled Phoenix pay system, considered one of the biggest public management disasters in decades.

The former minister of sport and persons with disabilities steps into the department with some of the most difficult and high-profile management files in government, from procurement and Shared Services Canada to the vexing Phoenix pay system that has left thousands of public servants underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all over the past 18 months.

Recently released internal documents show that in early August nearly half of the more than 300,000 public servants paid by Phoenix continue to experience pay problems and typically wait more than 30 days for them to be resolved.

After her swearing-in at Rideau Hall, Qualtrough told reporters that Trudeau gave her “marching orders” to fix Phoenix but she was unable to answer questions about how close the government was to doing so. The mandate letter Trudeau gave Qualtrough for her new post doesn’t mention a word about Phoenix.

When pressed by reporters on the scope of the Phoenix blunders, Qualtrough said she recognised it was a complex issue with many obstacles but she had the impression from cabinet discussions that the matter was “heading in the right direction.”

“Personally, I think this is unacceptable,” said Qualtrough. “You deserve to be paid for the work you have done and you deserve to be paid properly. The prime minister has made this a priority for me and I look forward to being briefed and remedying [Phoenix] as soon as possible.”

In the lead-up to Monday’s shuffle, some bureaucrats were hoping for a more seasoned minister to replace Judy Foote, whose retirement from politics last week triggered the cabinet shakeup. The former Paralympic athlete was first elected in 2015 and immediately named to cabinet as minister of sport and persons with disabilities. One senior official said Qualtrough is “very capable” and Trudeau has “huge trust in her ability to manage big challenges.” The B.C. native developed a reputation in her previous post for being “detail oriented” and a well-prepared minister. Qualtrough chaired the cabinet’s open and transparent government committee and led the cabinet committee on federal recovery efforts for the British Columbia wildfires.

Foote had been on leave of absence from the public services portfolio since the spring and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr has been handling the portfolio while PSPC Parliamentary Secretary Steven MacKinnon stick handled many of the Phoenix issues. Phoenix dominated Foote’s time at the department, which over the past 18 months has seen the senior management team responsible for Phoenix move, retire or be replaced.

Qualtrough takes the job as Auditor-General Michael Ferguson is working on his first report into how Phoenix went off the rails. She will have the support of a working group of cabinet ministers – led by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale – to assist in turning around the Phoenix fiasco.

Chris Aylward, vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said he was encouraged Qualtrough considers fixing Phoenix a priority. With her previous experience in practising human rights law, Aylward said she has to understand that paying people on time and properly for their work is a ‘basic human right.’

Qualtrough inherits the Phoenix file at a critical juncture. The department was making progress on eliminating the creeping backlog, when presented with 27 collective agreements to be implement by deadlines imposed in the new contracts.

The workload in implementing thousands of pay adjustments and raises, and calculating restorative pay has created a bottleneck, forcing the department to divert staff from working on the backlog to implementing the contracts. The new four-year contracts, retroactive to 2014, will take months to implement, especially since some unions — those representing lawyers, diplomats, border guards, and prison guards — have not even reached deals yet. Unions are already gearing up for the next round of collective bargaining.

Phoenix is considered one of the biggest public management disasters in years, becoming a huge drag on both the government and public service’s reputation, and some senior bureaucrats say it could actually hinder the government in delivering on its priorities. Moreover, Phoenix has affected the government’s ability to recruit new young talent and it has undermined the mobility of public servants. Some experienced bureaucrats would rather stay put in existing jobs than accept promotions or take on special assignments and risk their pay cheques going awry.

Said one senior official: “It’s hard to want to come and work for an employer or take a promotion from an employer that can’t even do the basics like pay you properly.”